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thurs 12th moving on to kyoto later on today,so made time to visit the local street festival which was a mass of traditional food stalls and plenty of choices of hand made lucky charmes to mark the festival.we bottled the delicious octopus and opted for the safe option of a traditional japanese pancake which unlike most dishes was of a massive proportion!!Packed our bags and headed for Kyoto.
fri 13th unlucky for some(but not us for once)set off to visit the massive and highly impressive kyomizu-dera temple and stumbled upon the pagoda pictured above.Having wandered around pointing and grunting to very patient and kind locals using our four words of japanese for a considerable time we did very well to reach our destination this century.But we were not dissapointed in the slightest as it was a breathtaking work of art.Next stop the Kyoto imperial palace,this involved a couple of bus journeys and a mile long hike only to find we had arrived at the wrong gate.Upon reaching the right gate only to find the last tour of the day started ten minutes earlier,and the next one wasnt untill saturday morning,and in japanese!!If only we knew any japanese swear words.Still time to get lost once more on our way to another temple,Rokuon-ji temple also known as the golden pavillion.The highlight being the golden palace surrounded by a lake full of coi carp beautifull gardens.Which more than made up for the farce at the imperial palace.
The day was concluded with a traditional style japanese meal minus our shoes in very modern surroundings,not a bad days work after all.
Sat 14th,before packing our bags and heading for Kyoto we just about managed to fit in a trip to Nijo castle,home of one of the early shoguns and one of the most important castles in the country,for a castle it had some amazing landscaped gardens with some lovely paintings all around the rooms all painted by Kano(before he played for pompey),caught the 13.39 bullet train which left exactly on time as they always do,arrived in Hakata and sorted our prison cell out,very basic room no windows and just three beds,we thought we had an earthquake last night but it is official it was Ians snoring.
Sun 15th,caught the 12.37 Bullet train from Hakata-Hiroshima,from the station we caught the metro to the Atomic Dome,a shell of a building which survived the blast one of only a handful that did,next stop was the peace garden full of different types of memorials for all those who died,inside the grounds of the garden is the mueseum which was very moving and interesting,we then took a train and a ferry to a lovely island called Miyajima,in the sea is a shrine called Itsukushima all lit up at night,being late and dark when we arrived we didnt really see the island in all its glory.
Mon 16th,met up with a few fellow travelers in the hostel,met a nice lad called Jordon from Brighton who led me astray a bit and had a bit of a late night /early session,had a well earned lay in till 2pm and then headed off to watch a Sumo tournament,big lads but a good experience.
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